Monday, October 20, 2008

Pumpkins

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is pumpkins. She showed the kids a little sugar pumpkin and read them a book she had made about the lifecycle of a pumpkin. She taught them all sorts of interesting stuff about pumpkins: they're fruits, not vegetables; they're actually the largest fruit, with some weighing more than 1,000 pounds; pumpkin flowers are edible; pumpkins are 90% water; and they take four months to grow from seed to mature pumpkin.

Much to my delight, Miss D's son came very eager to finish the daily plan we had made for him last week (also much to my delight, my daughter finished everything on her list over the weekend).

He and my daughter did the Tool/Toy sorting activity from Fire Safety week...

...while Miss K's daughter did a new bead sequencing activity I made over the weekend:

I had a feeling that the bead sequencing activity would be popular, so I followed some advice I read somewhere (can't find it now - sorry!) and made namecards/placeholders for each child. If another person is working with an activity, the child puts his or her namecard on the shelf where the work is kept to mark a turn in line. This system worked well with the bead sequencing activity, which everyone wanted to try.

Miss D's son carefully completed one of the two items left on his plan (the second set of four "yellow" letters, h/u/s/c)...

...but asked if he could finish the final thing (putting his new sounds in a Sound Book) tomorrow because he wanted to do the lacing cards and the bead sequencing activity, instead. We added those to his list so that he'd be able to check them off when he was finished (a great way to get him using a pencil!):

My daughter worked with the cutting activity that has been on the shelves since the first week of school. Interestingly, she didn't want to do this at first because she felt frustrated when she couldn't cut precisely on the line. I pointed out how well she had cut out the tires for the firetruck she made with Miss K last week, and she was encouraged to try the cutting activity again. She was excited to see her own progress as she cut each snip right on the line:

Next it was her turn to try the beads...

...while Miss D's son completed this 6-sided puzzle...

...and Miss K's daughter did the grass-cutting activity. Miss K asked her if she could decorate her picture with some things she might find outside during the fall, and she spontaneously drew this lovely apple:

Miss K and her daughter also played I Spy with the phonetic objects, and they spied for initial sounds and rhyming sounds.

Finally, we mixed red-, blue-, and yellow-colored water to make the primary colors:

I told the kids this color-mixing activity would be on the shelves tomorrow, but this experience showed me that they aren't quite ready for that. First, they need to get the hang of using a medicine dropper, so tomorrow I plan to put out a water-transferring activity.

For PE, Miss D led the kids outside, where they kicked soccer balls through and around little orange cones, and then they played with the parachute.

We closed with the letter H verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Honor your father and your mother," Exodus 20:12